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Thread: Best pub experience 2017

  1. #1
    Join Date: Jun 2010

    Location: Essex, United Kingdom

    Posts: 899
    I'm givingyouaprettygoodclue.

    Default Best pub experience 2017

    It’s the time of year when lists are published. I’ve always had a thing for keeping lists, especially music-related ones, although it’s important to be similarly prepared on all of life’s critical issues (your Top 10 vintage cars, holiday destinations, actresses etc) so that you can save valuable time once that lottery win happens. Even now I reckon that Nick Hornby stole part of my soul to create his main character in “High Fidelity”. Anyway, this simple unassuming moment was my no.1 pub experience of 2017.

    At Halloween I had a weekend session in London with my music festival pals. On the Saturday lunchtime, following a pleasant stroll around Hyde Park, we began a crawl of interesting pubs. The object of the exercise is to discover proper pubs tucked away in the West End and not the ones aimed at tourists. One such proved to be The Marquis on Chandos Place.

    We bowled in the door to be met with the sight of a stock of LPs and a turntable in pride of place behind the bar. It was one of the modern Pioneer decks. Mild euphoria broke out, dampened only by the fact that it was playing (and I’m hesitant to type the following words) UB40’s “Greatest Hits”. Nice long bar area suitable for standing, several Sharps ales on draft and very accommodating staff. The usual wretched speakers and acoustics that you’ll find in any pub, but then again context is everything and so sound quality wasn’t the point.

    A short negotiation later and ersatz reggae cover versions were replaced with David Bowie’s “ChangesOneBowie”. It’s obviously no news that Bowie was a chameleon. However I looked round the pub as we worked through both sides of the album, 2 or 3 pints and the occasional singalong, and it really came home to me that Bowie was almost unique in the sheer breadth of audience to whom he appealed - whether you’re a lad-rocker, nightclubber, art schooler, lover, family guy, soulboy, grumpy old man or whatever. The thing is that he managed to get so many different people to buy into him whereas many other artists manage to lose their audience when they attempt a single change in style.

    I have to confess that since he was part of the fabric surrounding us as I grew up I wasn’t particularly into Bowie for a long time, in the same way as I wasn’t into The Beatles. Yes, I got that the songs were very good, but my experience of them was based on blanket over-exposure and so once I reached an age when I’d got the cash to buy records I wasn’t interested in getting music that I knew inside-out to the point of weariness. I could appreciate them critically but didn’t connect with them emotionally due to being desensitised. With the benefit of time and delving into the albums I’ve seen things differently over the years.

    Coming out of that little daydream (we’d already had a couple of pints before The Marquis), “Golden Years” was fading out at the end of side two. Although I’d have stayed a while longer the crew decided that there was further work to be done down the road in The Nell Gwynne on Bull Inn Court which is delightfully Dickensian and has a jukebox. Strangely the number 4 in the jukebox didn’t work so at least 10% of selections became somewhat random. We mused on how different the world might be if the number 4 never worked, with satellites falling from the sky and so on. Spookily at that point a guy sitting at the bar crashed to the floor as his stool collapsed beneath him - you’ve got it, one of the 4 legs… But even witnessing supernatural forces and having a jukebox at our own fingertips weren’t a patch on the vicarious pleasure of watching a bartender put an LP on.

    So while we endure the craze of faddists buying "vinyls" merely to look at, I thought I’d give The Marquis on Chandos Place my award for my best pub experience of 2017.

  2. #2
    Join Date: Oct 2012

    Location: The Black Country

    Posts: 6,089
    I'm Alan.

    Default

    Fantastic post Pete, I could almost have been there with you.

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